This is how they think science works
But it’s unavoidable when one party is explicitly anti-science. Scientific American scrutinizes Project 2025 from the perspective of science, and you won’t be surprised to learn that a substantial part of that document is explicitly about politicizing science. Let’s start by replacing civil servants with Republican hacks.
Project 2025 presents a long-standing conservative vision of a smaller government and describes specific, detailed steps to achieve this goal. It would shrink some federal departments and agencies while eliminating others—dividing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into two weaker entities, for instance, and abolishing the Department of Education (ED) entirely.
What is even more unusual, and also mapped out in detail, is a plan to exert more presidential control over traditionally nonpartisan governmental workers—those Trump might describe as members of the “deep state,” or regulatory bureaucracy. For example, Project 2025 claims that the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other scientific institutions are “vulnerable to obstructionism” unless appointees at these agencies are “wholly in sync” with presidential policy. To that end, it would reclassify tens of thousands of civil service jobs as political positions that answer to the president.
Obstructionism, in their mind, is when someone competent and qualified tells a MAGA Republican that their ideas are wrong. Project 2025 hits a whole bunch of topics: abortion, agriculture, climate change, education, environment, health care, and technology. Do those sound like areas where science might possibly make an informed contribution? Or would you prefer to have some smug graduate of a backwoods Bible college dictating policy?
The hydroxychloroquine rollout in 2020 would have been epic.
Project 2025 is much worse than that.
They want to subjugate women and turn Americans into breeder slaves.
It’s forced birthing and female slavery.
It’s also based on nothing but lies.
That era never existed.
The Good Old Days of Kevin Roberts are entirely fictional.
There never were any cultural norms that protected women and forced men to take responsibility.
Up until the 1970s, women needed male permission to do such simple things as open a checking account or sign a mortgage to buy a house. Women were legally paid less for the same work as a man and often fired when they got pregnant. Divorce was hard to get which trapped many women in marriages noted mostly for high levels of domestic violence they had to endure.
Women needed their husbands permission to have their tubes tied.
This is still the law in a few states even though it is now illegal.
And some hospitals and docs still require the husbands permission for a tubal ligation. They don’t require the wife’s permission for a vasectormy though.
Our society is the way it is today because it has evolved to make it fairer, more egalitarian, and more livable for everyone. We’ve come a long ways and have a long ways to go still.
Kevin Roberts is a liar who lives in a delusional fantasyland.
The above comic could only be drawn by someone who has never heard of peer-review. Unless there are flies on every telescope, it would be obvious what that person thinks they’re seeing isn’t actually happening.
“Or would you prefer to have some smug graduate of a backwoods Bible college dictating policy?”
That would be Ryan Walters, Superintendent of Education for Oklahoma who has decreed that the Bible will be taught in every classroom of every public school in Oklahoma. Also, mandated that every classroom will have a Bible on display. Walters said that he would revoke the teaching certificate of any teacher not following the mandate, and that if you don’t like it you can move to California.
Unconstitutional, you say? Pish posh! Walters boss, Governor Stitt, proclaimed that he welcomes getting sued and taking the issue to the Supreme Court where he believes the radical Taliban “conservative” majority will overturn decades of decisions.
@ Raven: There was never really a cultural norm that protected women but there was one that people didn’t talk about these things. Abortions happened, there were more orphans, more depressed men, and more abused women. In polite society this didn’t get talked about.
This is part of what people like Kevin Roberts want. They don’t mind that people suffer as long as they don’t have to hear about it or think about it. They want a rose colored glasses society where the bad things are covered up or when they can’t be covered up attributed to the victims being bad people.
A fly landing on the lens of a refracting telescope would be invisible to anyone looking through the eyepiece! The telescope is focused on infinity and the fly would be totally blurred out of visibility. It’s only effect would be a very slight reduction in the apparent brightness of the objects it is focused on. Well it might also make some teeny tiny diffraction spikes too.
Astronomers focus their telescopes on things in the sky, not on the telescope’s lenses or mirrors.
raven @ #2 – Roberts is definitely a liar. As for delusional, perhaps that depends on whether he believes the lies or believes that the lies will be to his benefit. I’m confident he believes the later which is probably more important than whether he actually believes the lies.
The NOAA is the agency that tracks and warns about hurricanes, isn’t it?
So, the forecast paths of hurricanes will now exactly follow the outlines of Trump’s Sharpie.
@garnetstar:
Yep. The Republicans hate it because the NOAA actually takes climate change seriously.
As I noted in another discussion, one thing these people are studiously ignoring is that one of the biggest clients for the NOAA forecasting is the U.S. military. No surprise that the people running aircraft carriers might want to know about incoming storm conditions. The Project 2025 stance of essentially privatizing weather forecasting is great if you’re Blackwater/Xe/whatever they call themselves now. But it would also explicitly put a corporate interest in place that could then lie to the U.S. Navy about storm conditions. If you haven’t already thought of ways this could be used to redirect U.S. Imperialism to keep their other autocratic friends happy, you haven’t been thinking hard enough.
That has already happened. G W Bush presidency and the abuse of NASA atmosphere scientists over global warming.
I’m working on what they want to do with the USDA right now, and the Biden Administration is accused of wanting to transform our food system more than once–they have a problem with going organic. Not that that kind of transformation would even be possible given the rules surrounding what it takes to produce organic food. Of course, the people buying the food are useful here. It gives the Republicans an opportunity to complain that the democrats aren’t thinking about how expensive that is and how it would affect the American people. The chapter brings up climate change a few times and dismisses it as an ancillary issue–I can’t wait to get around to the research on that! Then there’s the Federal Sugar Program, where they express dismay that it has forced a few candy companies to shift business to Mexico where the sugar is cheaper. And they figure that farmers can either rely on the ARC/PLC or crop insurance, but not both. I’m looking forward to digging into the legislative history of NEPA and the ESA, as those were both passed by Congress and are binding on the Forest Service. There’s no way this Congress will agree on anything as far as repealing that legislation. Finally, as far as I can tell, Daren Bakst (who wrote the chapter) has never been on a farm in his life. He is, of course, a lawyer. It’s taking a lot longer to do the research than I had planned just because there is so much there, but I’m hoping to be done with it and writing soon. In the meantime, I’m learning a LOT about the programs and politics of farming! When I finish, it will be up at https://sciencefornonscientistsblog.wordpress.com/. Thanks, PZ, for letting me link this here. (I know it’s linked elsewhere on this blog, too, so, again, muchisimas gracias!)